Lenka Lente

Hanns Heinz Ewers - Sorcière Ma Mère
Nurse With Wound - The Top of the Left Ear

Lenke Lente. Book + CD
60 PAGES. 10 X 15⋅5 CM
ISBN : 979-10-94601-31-0


Hanns Heinz Ewers has been described as the German Edgar Allen Poe and the reason you’ve probably never heard of him [that includes me until this dropped through the door] is that few of his works have been translated into English. His books began to appear in the early 20th century and with them numerous [and notorious] short stories, there were plays, critical essays, poetry, librettos, and a correspondence with lifelong friend Aleister Crowley. Hitler commissioned him to write a biography of Nazi martyr Horst Wessel, something he might have regretted had he known Ewers was a philo-semite with homosexuals tendencies, but hey, whose perfect?

Intrigued by Ewers, I sought out a translation of Sorcière Ma Mère [My Mother the Witch] and found one courtesy of Frans de Waard. An online PDF translated by fans of Ewers perhaps, and those keen to read his works in English. Its a curious short story in the form of an epistle written by the strangely named Dr Kaspar Krazy Cat to a rarely seen brother begging him not to get married. His reasoning being that if they have children they will become witches, assuming that the witch gene misses a generation. What follows is the doctors evidence that his mother is a witch; she cures warts, has poisoned mushrooms in her garden, has a closet full of brooms and curses those who cross her, literally and usually with terminal effects. These observations go further to enforcing his suspicions, which culminate in him seeing his mother transform in to a cat and receive an injury from a dachshund while in a graveyard. When she wakes up in the morning in human form the injury is still there and its this that makes him write the letter. There’s a twist in tale too, albeit a slight one. 

That injury occurs at the top of the left ear which is where Nurse With Wound come in. I’ve been listening to a bit of Nurse With Wound of late, especially Soliloquy For Lilith which I took to the stereo while full of lurgi over the festive period. There really is something to be said for being so ill that all you can do is put one CD after another in to the player. You may be ill, but on the plus side it is possible to soak up hour after hour of drifting, droning music all without having to move hardly a muscle. ‘Top of the Left Ear’ is a gamelan-esque twenty-minute exactly Nurse drone where finger cymbals ring out amid scythe like cuts, digital jibber-jabber and someone sharpening a knife on a whetstone in rhythmical fashion. It’s eeriness makes a good match for the story it comes wrapped in and runs to around the same time it’ll take you to read it.

A match made in hell? Hardly, but another suitable obscure author/Nurse With Wound match from Lenka Lente.


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